


If the Seas Catch Fire

by QueenofEden



Series: Rotten Work [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Blue Hawke, Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, F/F, Friends With Benefits, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Isabela being Isabela (Dragon Age), Past Anders/Hawke, Use of In-Game Dialogue, feelings with porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 09:04:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12478100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenofEden/pseuds/QueenofEden
Summary: In all aspects of her life, Isabela has always detested uncertainty. She prides herself on her ability to be in control, to be one step ahead, to know herself even when nobody else can be assed to. Which is possibly why this whole business with Hawke has her feeling so out of sorts.





	If the Seas Catch Fire

**Author's Note:**

> _trust your heart_  
>  ** _if the seas catch fire_**  
>  _(and live by love_  
>  _though the stars walk backward)_  
>  \- dive for dreams, e.e. cummings  
>   
>    
> thanks and love to [rhoswenmahariel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/salutationtothestars/pseuds/rhoswenmahariel),  
> [screamingwine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vodkaanddebauchery/pseuds/screamingwine), and [vulpineRaconteur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulpineRaconteur/pseuds/vulpineRaconteur) for beta-ing, all remaining mistakes are my own fault and or hubris  
> 

Isabela sees her the moment she walks in, the sour look and general miasma of ‘Bad Mood’ something difficult to miss. As too, is what looks like a single, shining gold sovereign sliding across the bar into Corff’s waiting hand. Ballsy. Or stupid, though Hawke has never been either. Not an eye in all of Kirkwall could miss the glint of gold, and only fools spend theirs here. Isabela watches Hawke lean in close, looking determined, and whisper what must be a demand to keep her glass full at all costs. Her lip reading isn’t so good, but the immediate appearance of a full, frothing pitcher before her seems a strong indication.    

She's four cups in, and working on her fifth, before Hawke even spots Isabela sitting opposite her at the bar and saunters over for a chat, her words already starting to slur at the edges. Isabela notices it all, like she notices most everything that happens in the Hanged Man, but doesn't deign to comment on it. What business is it of hers if Hawke wants to get herself knackered, she asks herself. If anyone in Kirkwall deserves it, it's probably her after all. Best to just leave it alone.

At least up until Hawke chooses to so brazenly flirt with her.

_ “And do I get a kiss from the feisty temptress, when I present her with the hard won prize?” _

_ “If you want,” Isabela replied with an easy chuckle. “I'll even let you pick where I plant it.” _

The memory lingers. The quip came naturally, slipped out of her mouth before she could think twice about it, and sure, it brought a pleased little smile to Hawke's pretty lips, but a piss-poor taste lingers in Isabela's mouth even now. An eternity of seconds later, when Hawke eventually stalks off and sequesters herself at a table in the corner to nurse her drink, the encounter leaves Isabela cold, alone at the bar with a still half-full glass of whiskey and her thoughts – a dangerous combination if ever there were one.

It's not as if Hawke is a prude, Isabela reasons, sipping distractedly at her drink. She'd always been a good sport over the years, parrying Isabela's well-intentioned barbs with good sense and the occasional pointed remark of her own. It was a game of wits Isabela had come to enjoy, a duel in its own right, one worthy of note even in Isabela's long and illustrious career. But that was all it had ever been. Hawke had never goaded her on intentionally, or actually taken her up on any half-serious offers, it simply wasn't her style. It wasn’t how the game between them was played. Besides which, if the gutter rumors spoke true – and they usually did – there was almost certainly something going on between her and that ex-Warden, Anders. A fact which Isabela had so far, despite any perceived evidence to the contrary, intended to respect.

Isabela gestures to Norah for a pitcher of ale, on Hawke's generous tab of course, and takes it from her hands to carry over to Hawke's isolated little table herself. It had to be the drink – Hawke's drink, not her own, though perhaps the whiskey  _ was _ making her a little sentimental – that brought this on. Or whatever it was that had inspired the drinking in the first place.  _ You're too curious for your own good, Isabela,  _ is what she tells herself in a voice that's starting to sound suspiciously like Hawke's.  _ It's only going to get you into trouble. _ But Isabela had always liked trouble, hadn't she? Had practically reveled in it. And it wasn't curiosity if she was just...  _ concerned.  _ For a friend. Right?

“So what's wrong, Hawke?” she asks, pouring ale into Hawke's half-empty tankard before pouring herself into the lone chair across from her. Hawke startles violently at the intrusion, nearly toppling her cup, but relaxes once she realizes who her guest is.

Hawke frowns. She looks cagey, her brows knit together in a tiny knot above her nose. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well for one, you're drinking Corff's ale. On purpose,” Isabela says, lifting a finger. Hawke snorts. “And two, you're sitting here all by yourself looking like someone pissed in your porridge. Either something is wrong or you're hard at work on your Fenris impression, in which case don't let me stop you, it's coming along marvelously.”

That at least gets a wry chuckle out of her before she starts shaking her head.

“It's nothing. I'm fine,” she says, tucking a dark curl behind her ear.

Isabela raises a skeptical brow. “You're fine?” she asks.

“Yes.”

Isabela takes a sip of her own drink, eyeing Hawke over the brim of her cracked-clay tumbler. Hawke either doesn't mind the scrutiny, or fails to notice it at all.

“Bullshit,” Isabela says finally.

“What?”

“Bull. Shit,” Isabela says again, slowly, accompanying each syllable with a tilt of her head. “There's something the matter with you and I want to know what.”

Hawke rolls her eyes, then frowns again, looking a tinge green around the gills, as though the combination of the act and the drink had made her irrevocably dizzy.

“What’s got you suddenly so interested in my personal affairs?” she asks after she's recovered, giving her head a little shake to clear it.

Isabela sits back in her chair, worrying the stud under her lip with her tongue. Truth be told, she hasn't quite figured that out herself. If this were anyone else, she knows exactly where she'd be – twice as drunk and on her back (or her knees, or against the wall), and as far away from this table and their problems as possible – but this is  _ Hawke.  _ Which makes it different, in a completely inexplicable sort of way. “There aren't very many people I give a damn about in this pisshole of a city,” she says with a small shrug. “If there's something going on with one of them, I need to know what and who to make pay for it. Simple as that.”

Hawke fails to look convinced by her explanation, or maybe it's just the ale putting that dispassionate look on her face. Whichever it is, Isabela sighs, blowing a wayward piece of hair out of her face.

“The way you are right now versus your usual stuffed shirted-ness? Don’t you think it’s a little… incongruous? Because I do and frankly I hate it.”

“Incongruous?”

“Bang up word isn’t it? Read it in a book once.”

“Oh, a well-read pirate?” Hawke muses, taking a swig from her cup. “Speaking to the incongruity of things.”

Isabela snickers. “You’ve got quite the lip on you when you’re drunk, y’know that?” She leans forward on her elbows. “Andraste’s tits, what would the people think if they could see Paragon of the Virtuous and Downtrod, Serah Hawke sniping with the best of them and deep enough in her cups to give even me a flirt.”

“’M not drunk,” she says defensively, slurring her words only a little.

Isabela rolls her eyes. Bless her poor, dear soul. “Sure you’re not, sweet thing.”

“I’m not,” Hawke repeats, taking a large gulp from her mug as if to prove her point, “and I’m certainly no paragon of anything.”

Unimpressed, Isabela simply hums and sips from her own cup.

“Wait--”

Isabela pauses and eyes her over the brim.

“What’s so wrong about me flirting with you _? _ ”

Isabela raises a brow and swallows, setting her tankard down with a heavy thump.

“What, you going to try and convince me there’s something right about it?”

Hawke leans forward across the small table, eyes squinted and mouth turned down, looking perplexed. “But you flirt with _me_ all the time.”

“Well yes, because that's what I _do_ ,” Isabela stresses. “The whore who'll flirt and fuck anyone still breathing and all that. Don't you listen to the big girl when she talks? It's my _thing._ ” She gestures with a hand to all of her then uses the same hand to point a finger at Hawke. “ _Your_ thing is to shake your head and say something sensible like, ' _don't be so crass, Isabela,_ ' and send me on my way. That's how this works, that's how it's always worked. You can’t just up and change the way the world spins, that's not fair.”

Hawke scoffs, slumping petulantly in her seat. “Maker, can't a girl engage in some harmless carousing without being interrogated?”

Isabela quirks one delicately arched eyebrow while Hawke visibly squirms, realizing all at once that she may have said more than she intended. She picks up her neglected cup and drinks deeply from it.

“Oh is that how it is, then?” Isabela leans in conspiratorially. “What about you and Ser-Pouts-A-Lot? I thought the two of you were--” She makes an admittedly crude hand gesture in lieu of finishing her sentence.

Hawke snorts into her cup, the echo adding to the hollow sound of it. “Apparently not _ , _ ” she says, sounding more bitter than the ale she's drinking.

_ Ah, heartache,  _ Isabela muses, sitting back and trying not to look disappointed. _ How mundane. _

“I mean there was something, maybe, at least I thought-- but--” Hawke continues, quieter this time, before trailing off. She stares down into the bottom of her cup as if she expects it to bestow upon her all the answers of the universe.

“Do you...want to talk about it?” Isabela presses, trying to hide the hesitation in her voice. She's never been good with this...feelings-y stuff, after all, and isn't sure now's the time to start. Captain Isabela's cure-all for a broken heart has always been hard liquor and a harder fuck, and it seems Hawke is halfway there already without any undue influence from her.

“No,” Hawke says, draining the dregs from her tankard and dropping it to the table with a finality that has Isabela trying not to visibly sag from relief.

“More drink then?” she offers, and when she nods back enthusiastically, Isabela fills Hawke's cup to the brim.

Isabela sits with her through two more tankards worth of ale and a half-hour long rant about the underutilized potential of the blood lotus in healing poultices before she decides both she and Hawke have had enough. Hawke vehemently disagrees until Isabela dares her to stand up and prove that she could, to quote, 'just as easily walk back up to the bar and order another jug herself  _ thank you very much _ ', and promptly almost falls on her ass but for the grace of Isabela's arm around her waist. She stares up at Isabela through dark lashes, something indecipherable in her hazel eyes that makes Isabela feel like she's suddenly swallowed a mouth full of sand. Their gazes only catch for a moment before Hawke looks away, but it puts a familiar roil in Isabela's stomach – days at sea when the Maker had painted the sky and sea bluer than sapphires, inviting all to sail on merrily, only to crush unluckier ships than hers with massive waves. Captain’s Intuition, she’d called it. Finely tuned after ten years, it had rarely let her down.

She shakes it off, putting it up to the lingering effects of mixing liquor and beer. No more, no less.

“All right, come on, you lush, up you go.” She grunts, hoisting Hawke's arm over her shoulders. Hawke hangs limp at her side, grumbling quietly to herself, head lolling towards her shoulder then forward to rest chin-on-chest. There's no way Isabela can get her all the way back to Hightown in this state; they'd likely be killed, arrested, or robbed. Potentially an intriguing mix featuring all of the above. She could take her back to her old place, though whether Hawke would consider leaving her in the care of that skeevy uncle of hers much of a favour is doubtful. Isabela sighs and looks over to the stairs leading up to the slightly more habitable portion of The Hanged Man-- to her private rooms --and then back to Hawke, dark hair shining in the lamp-light and itching Isabela’s palm to push it back from where it falls like a curtain across her face.

“You'll get the couch,” she tells her sternly. “And I'll hear no complaining.”

 

When she wakes the next morning, Hawke is gone. Isabela feels some sense of relief, though it’s known that waves that come up must always, eventually, crash down.

 

\---

 

It's nearly two and a half weeks before Isabela sees Hawke again. She's beginning to wonder if maybe, just _maybe_ , Hawke has been avoiding her on purpose, when the woman in question simply strolls through the door of the Hanged Man. Merrill notices her as well from her seat directly across from Isabela. She smiles broadly, waving her over – effectively ending their game of cards. The two chat for a moment, about what Isabela isn't exactly sure, but she thinks it may be about plants _again,_ while Isabela tries to look very busy at gathering up the scattered deck left behind on the table. The two, in her vast experience, can continue on in this vein for hours. They mightn’t even notice if Isabela were to slip silently away -- up to her rooms? Too obvious. Out the front? A daring option. Soon enough, however, Merrill is giving Hawke a tight squeeze goodbye and Hawke slides into her vacant seat, chasing away all thoughts of escape.

Isabela shoots her what she hopes is an easy grin, shuffling the cards in her hands with a flourish.

“Well well, look who we have here! Care for a game, stranger?”

Hawke at least has the courtesy to look chagrined, flushing deep enough to be noticeable even under the warm ochre of her skin.

“No. No thank you,” she says as her hands pick absently at some invisible thread on her robes. “Perhaps some other time.”

“Suit yourself.” Isabela shrugs, setting the cards to the side and steepling her fingers in front of her. “What can I do for you then? Wait--let me guess.” She interrupts before Hawke can say anything. “An orphan is stuck in a tree halfway up the Coast, past a camp of notorious, bloodthirsty raiders, and you need my help fetching it, all, of course, free of charge. Also the tree is actually made of darkspawn. I'm close, aren't I? Tell me I'm close.”

Hawke pulls a face, her nose scrunching up adorably. “How could a tree possibly be  _ made  _ of darkspawn?”

“Honestly, Hawke, the things I've seen spending time with you, I'm starting to believe anything is possible.”

The corner of Hawke's mouth twitches and she shrugs a little, conceding her point. “Well, lucky for us we won’t have to find out any time soon,” she says, then sobers, folding her arms on the table in front of her. There's that curious little crease between her brows and she looks...nervous? Why would she be nervous? “Actually I – I came because I wanted to talk. To you.”

Isabela can't help but laugh; it's easier than acknowledging the feeling, like a slowly sinking anchor, in her gut. “You want to talk?”

Hawke futzes with the cuff of her sleeve before she realizes and clenches her hands into tight fists. “Yes.”

“All right sweetness, I'll bite,” she says. “What's this about?”

Hawke takes a deep breath.

“I wanted to apologize–for making a drunken fool of myself in front of you the last time I was here.” 

Isabela opens her mouth to say...something, but Hawke barrels forward, robbing her of the chance. “I realize I should have said something sooner but I was, well, I was avoiding you-- as if you couldn’t tell-- because I was embarrassed. Can you forgive me?”

Isabela blinks owlishly, unsure of how to respond. Whatever she was expecting to come out of Hawke's mouth, it certainly wasn't an apology. Though, it is  _ Hawke  _ she's talking about – damned sweet as sugar, tough as nails, earnest to a  _ fucking _ fault Hawke – so really this is probably exactly what she should have expected.

“You don't have to do that, you goose,” she replies, tone all wrong-- too soft, too much a stunned sort of quiet when she’d been hoping for flippancy.

It's Hawke's turn to look back at her, confused. “But--”

Isabela clears her throat, hoping to clear away that wrongness with it. “I promise, your drunken antics are safe with me. No conditions or apologies necessary. On my honor as a pirate, I’ll never tell a soul.” She winks when she says it, but hopes Hawke can recognize the sincerity of her words. 

Hawke settles back, looking more than a little lost. “At least accept my thanks then? I don't – I don't remember much of what happened, or even what I said after a while but…I know you talked to me, kept me company, looked after me. You even let me sleep in your room. You didn't have to do any of that.”

“Please,” Isabela scoffs, feeling strange. “Anyone would have done the same.”

But Hawke shakes her head, a sweet sort of smile on her lips. “In this city? No, they really wouldn't have.” She reaches out and places a warm hand over Isabela's, just resting there, barely touching. “You're a good friend, Isabela.”

“Am I now?” she asks with an uneasy chuckle. The room feels over-warm and a little wonky, which is odd given she hasn't had a drop to drink. She should fix that. Now. Right now.

She calls out loudly for Norah, demanding a bottle of the Hanged Man's best. The serving girl sneers at her, in the customary way she always does, and Isabela flashes her a wide-toothed grin.

“It's not much, but it'll get you just as drunk as anything you'll find in Hightown,” she says in a loud aside to Hawke once Norah drops the bottle and two cups off at their table. Hawke reaches into her lap for her purse, but Isabela swats at her, saying, “No no, don't you dare. This one's on me.”

That cute little pinched look of Hawke's that heralds bemusement, the one she's quickly becoming very familiar with, returns as Isabela slips Norah more than enough coin to cover the drink, plus a generous tip. The scowling waitress scowls a little less as she walks away.

“That's generous of you,” Hawke says, sounding surprised.

Isabela shrugs one shoulder, pulling the cork from the bottle with her teeth. “Well, what's coin if not for spending, eh?”

She fills her own cup then gestures with the bottle to Hawke, who shakes her head quickly, looking more than miserable at just the thought. Isabela laughs.

“You could be saving? To buy yourself a new ship someday,” Hawke offers, back to looking at her slightly sideways from where her head is propped up on her fist. The low, flickering lights of the pub lamps catch her eyes at just the right angle and make them glitter, brilliantly beautiful shades of green and gold. Like a pile of rare and fine amber and emerald jewels that Isabela would be all too happy to curl around and hoard all for herself like a dragon in its nest. Isabela downs the liquor in her cup too fast, swallows air, and chokes a little on the burn in her throat.

“There you go,” she says once she's done coughing. She leans in close, both elbows on the table, blaming her heart racketing in her chest and the light feeling in her head on the lack of oxygen. “Always ruining our fun with good sense.”

Hawke laughs, full throated and genuine and the sound of it takes Isabela by surprise. She doesn't think in all their cumulative years of knowing one another she's ever heard Hawke do much real laughing. Not that she'd had much to be laughing about. It kindles something small and precious deep in her core to know she was the cause.

Isabela drinks, and Hawke watches her drink. She laughs at Isabela's stories and her bad jokes, and eventually Isabela cajoles her into a few hands of Wicked Grace which Hawke proceeds to lose spectacularly. It comforts her to know that there is at least one thing she doesn’t excel at. Well, that and holding her liquor apparently. Despite how much a part of her had enjoyed Drunk Hawke’s uninhibited ramblings, Sober Hawke, she finds, to her surprise, is nearly as much of a delight to be around. She tells just as many strange stories from her childhood in Ferelden, tries for a few poorly set up jokes, and knocks her knees companionably against Isabela's beneath the table; the latter of which, Isabela chooses mostly to ignore.

_ This is nice _ , she thinks to herself a little dazedly, caught between the warmth of the fires around and the whiskey in her belly. This is the kind of thing that friends do, which is still a somewhat staggering thought. Isabela had never in her life been blessed with many friends – business partners, lovers, loyal subordinates, and somewhat trusted allies sure – but friends? People like Isabela didn't get or often deserve that luxury, and even if she had given in to such indulgent thoughts, she could never have conjured up someone like Hawke, not in her wildest dreams.

She'd been a decent enough sort in the beginning; smart and well skilled, everything the rumours said she'd be and more, but she was still human. Isabela had been certain, would have bet coin on it, even, that after returning from the Deep Roads, and setting herself and her mother up in that fancy estate, she would never see Hawke again. Wouldn't have even faulted her for it, truth be told. And yet, Hawke really was one in a million. Still here three years later, more money than you could shake a stick at, and a fucking  _ title _ later, slumming it in a dirty Lowtown pub simply because she  _ wanted  _ to. Going around helping the unhelpable, protecting the unprotectable without any of that self-righteous Chantry bullshit, without even asking for anything in return, all just because it was  _ the right thing to do, _ like she'd escaped from some nightmarish children's story. It made Isabela feel a little sick, but mostly a lot proud. If she was going to throw her lot in with anyone, she had and could do it with a lot worse than someone like Marian Hawke.

“You know,” she starts, after the joke Hawke had been in the middle of telling trails off into nothing as she realizes with a chuckle that she can't remember how it ends. “After we first met, I thought I'd have to watch myself around you.” The smile on Hawke's lips falters a bit. “But as it turns out, you're all right.”

Hawke lifts her brow quizzically, pulling a face. “Just all right?” she asks, then huffs out a small laugh, shaking her head. “That's mildly insulting you know.”

“You know what I mean.” Isabela sighs, gesturing with her half full cup. “You don't judge people, you're not afraid to get your hands dirty. You know, little things like that.”

“You got all of that from a story about a wild druffalo?” Hawke asks, teasing.

Isabela rolls her eyes. “Hush up you twit, I'm trying to pay you a compliment.” She drinks from her glass, drains it, then fills it up again with the last of the bottle and drinks that too before she speaks. “It’s just that… I can’t help but think, maybe if I'd had someone like you on board my ship when the – ” She bites her alcohol-loosened tongue, cursing herself. “... When the storm hit... maybe we wouldn't have been shipwrecked.”

The thought makes her frown. She doesn't like to spend much time dwelling on her past mistakes but – those had been good men, loyal men, and their senseless deaths weighed heavier on her heart these past few years than she cares to admit. Not to mention her ship, her poor, beautiful ship, dashed to flotsam on the rocks like a child's toy.

She's startled out of her reverie by the feeling of Hawke's hand on hers. It's hot, nearly unbearably so, and she can feel every staff-worn callous on her palm, but there's still something soft and almost delicate about it. A healer's hands, she supposes. It stands in stark contrast to Isabela's own scarred and sun-weathered skin. When she looks up from her impromptu study, Hawke's face is much closer than she expected.

“That's... very sweet of you to say, Isabela, thank you.”

Isabela swallows thickly, pulling her hand back and tucking it into her lap. Even there she can still feel the pressure of Hawke's fingers against her knuckles.  _ Maker, what is the matter with me? _ She rubs her hand against her flank, as though that would help remove the phantom touch. It doesn't.

“Yeah well, don't let it go to your big fat head.”

Hawke thankfully doesn't seem to have noticed anything amiss. She just smiles, cocks her head to one side and says, “You know, if you hadn't been shipwrecked, we would never have met.” Her eyes seem to glitter again, but Isabela doesn't think it's a trick of the light this time. “That would have been a shame.”

Isabela chuckles, ducking her head and raising her empty glass. “I'll drink to that.”

She wishes there was more whiskey left.

\---

 

In all aspects of her life, Isabela has always detested uncertainty. In sex, it gets you nothing but trouble, all fumbling and Things, and those things in the wrong places. In dueling it mostly gets you dead; any infinitesimal moment of hesitation often the difference between victory and a blade between your ribs. In sailing, surety of the highest caliber is required. One has to project confidence, has to know to reef the sails before you even wonder whether you ought to, and to show no sign of fear or weakness, lest the sea or your crew tear you apart. People however, normal everyday people, are never as easy as knives or ships. Their emotions and motivations make them more complex and unpredictable than any wind pattern, and as such Isabela had, for the most part, always chosen to avoid getting tangled up with them at all costs. She prides herself on her ability to be in control, to be one step ahead, to know herself even when nobody else can be assed to. Which is possibly why this whole business with Hawke has her feeling so out of sorts.

The drunken flirting she could have waved away as nothing -- she had, in fact, already done so -- a simple, albeit pleasant misunderstanding at best, and one already apologized for. That should have been the end of it, but of course it wasn't. Isabela had never been quite that lucky. First come the looks when she is sure Isabela didn’t know that she was looking, then follow the distinctly less brazen, yet undeniably intentional advances that would make a chantry sister look lewd. Not to mention all the _touching –_ hands on arms, and elbows, grasps of the hand that lasted just a bit too long and, well, Isabela is certainly no fool. She is well aware of _what_ Hawke is trying to accomplish, however clumsily, it is only that she cannot seem to discern the _why._ Or rather, for her part, why try so hard to ignore them? One does not cultivate a reputation such as Isabela's by being cautious, after all. Why diddle away her time over-thinking this when thinking about it only made her guts screw up and her head ache? If Hawke wants a tumble it certainly isn’t Isabela's job to lecture, and definitely not to hem and haw over her like a lovelorn lass plucking daisy petals. Hawke is a big girl, could tie her own boot laces and everything, and the fact that it’s Hawke is... irrelevant. Completely and utterly.

So Isabela reefs. Hawke is gone (as is, blessedly, Hawke’s mother) when she arrives at the estate, the first time she's been here since Hawke acquired the place. The dwarf, (Bottle? Bedlam? Bad-ham?), lets her in on his way out before she has the chance to pick the very expensive, delightfully complicated looking lock. She whiles away the time by helping herself to Hawke’s jewels and clothes, digs a crude doodle into the fine wood of the bannister with the tip of her blade, and picks through the scattered letters and writings on Hawke’s desk. She’s restless, jittery with something like nerves beating a rapid tattoo against the inside of her ribs by the time the door finally clicks open and Hawke’s absolute beast of a dog comes barrelling inside -- all slobber and paws practically the size of dinner plates-- woofing and barking excitedly at her feet. She pats his massive head and grins a bit as his stump tail wags so hard it takes his whole rear end with him.

Hawke follows up behind, propping her staff against the wall of the foyer. “Hugo? What in Andraste’s name has got you so worked up all of a-  _ oh, _ ” she breathes, her expression changing from weary to wary in the blink of an eye. “Isabela. What are you doing here? Is something wrong?”

“Wrong?” She waves away the notion with a hand as though it were smoke. “No no, don’t get your smalls in a twist dear, just a simple visit between friends.”

“Oh?”

“Mm, it’s a funny story, really, how long have you been here and it only just occurred to me this very day that I’d never come and wished you a proper housewarming?” She lies, smooth as the silk of Hawke’s coverlet, waiting on the bed upstairs. Hugo, smartly realizing he would be getting no more attention from Isabela or his Mistress, slinks away towards the kitchens.

Hawke tilts her head, looking unconvinced. “A housewarming?” 

“Yes. It’s the polite, neighborly thing to do, or so I hear from actual polite, neighborly people. I even brought this little beauty to celebrate with us. Lovely isn’t she?” She lifts a pretty crystal bottle from the mantle and gives it a shake in Hawke’s direction. 

“She?” Hawke questions with a smirk, the set of her shoulders relaxing a bit. She works one glove, then the other, off of her long, slender fingers. Isabela lets a shiver roll through her and nods.

“Yes,  _ she _ . Lifted her from some unworthy nobleman’s table after he was too sloshed to properly appreciate her. I have since been saving her for a special occasion. After all, a lady deserves to be savored, treated properly, especially when she’s been waiting for such a long time.” Isabela tracks the bob of Hawke’s throat as she swallows thickly. “Don’t you agree?”

“And this is that occasion? Right now?” Hawke asks. She lays her gloves on her desk and turns, gripping the back of the chair behind her to steady herself.

Isabela shrugs one shoulder. “If you like.” 

A pretty blush creeps down Hawke’s neck from her cheeks, down, down, down, lost past the collar of her insufferably prudish robes. Isabela wonders just how far that flush goes, wants to reach out and rend the cloth from neck to navel with her bare hands to find out, and unconsciously licks her lips. The motion catches Hawke’s eye and the blush deepens.

“Should I... get some glasses then?” Hawke asks, her breath coming a little quicker than it had only a moment ago. The way her voice trembles sets Isabela’s nerves alight, sparking hot under her skin. How could she ever have questioned this? The game, the hunt. This is what she lives for.

“Glasses,” she echoes on a laugh. “You’re just adorable, you are,” and expertly pops the cork with the flat of her boot knife. She holds the bottle out to Hawke, who takes it from her loose grasp tentatively. Hawke sips from the neck, watching Isabela over the tip of the bottle all the while, a quarry one must keep their eyes on at all times, lest it slip away. When she passes it back, Isabela puts the bottle to her lips and drinks deeply, letting the bittersweet bubbles tease the back of her throat and tickle her nose. She drinks until her head is swimming with stars, and the bottle pulls free from her lips with a small pop.

“Not bad,” she muses, passing the bottle in her grip back to Hawke, and strolling away across the front room.

Hawke swallows her mouthful. “Something wrong with the wine?”

“No, the wine is excellent,” she says, craning her neck this way and that to eye the tall ceilings and windows. “I was referring to this house. It’s quite fine, but I think I preferred the old place. It had more… charm.”

Hawke frowns at the abrupt change in subject. “You don’t like my house?” She sounds so genuinely offended Isabela can’t help but snort.

“Oh, it’s lovely, I suppose,” she says with a shrug, wresting the bottle from Hawke’s fingers to take another drag for herself. “Though, it hardly compares to anything in Lowtown.”

An incredulous laugh bubbles up from Hawke’s mouth, sweet as the ones still dancing across her tongue. “ _ Lowtown _ ? Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Not one bit, sweet thing,” Isabela says, sidling up next to her and slipping an arm around Hawke’s slender shoulders. “The smell of tar, and the sea,” she takes a deep breath as though she were smelling them now, releasing it with a tiny hum, “and the sound of some whore plying her trade in a back alley.” She trails the backs of her fingers down the column of Hawke’s throat and watches -- feels -- her shiver against her. “Don’t you miss that?” 

“I -- suppose I never noticed those things.” She gasps, breathless again, and trembling slightly after just that one, simple touch. Isabela’s head swims with thoughts of how responsive she will be to other sorts of touches as much as it does with the sparkling wine.

“Really? What a shame.”

“Is it?”

Isabela hums and sets the half-empty bottle down behind her. “A dreadful, terrible shame.”

Hawke swallows, turns into their half embrace, and catches the sash around Isabela’s waist with one feather-light hand. “Isabela--”

“Yes, Hawke?”

“Tell me you didn’t actually come here to talk about houses.”

Isabela’s smile stretches out across her face, catlike and calculated. Cupping Hawke’s jaw in one hand, she leans in until they come nearly nose to nose. “I didn’t come to talk about houses.”

It’s Hawke who jolts forward and slots their mouths together with none of the clumsiness Isabela would have expected. The kiss itself is chaste, but there is nothing of that in Hawke’s gaze when she pulls away. Those gold-and-gemstone eyes are molten and hungry, and fixed entirely on Isabela, burning a hole straight through to the core of her. In an instant Isabela had become less the hunter, and more the prey. Perhaps this would be even more fun than she’d anticipated.

“Is this what you wanted, Hawke?” Isabela asks, pressing close to drag her teeth over the shell of Hawke’s ear. In response, the hand trapped between them flexes and a soft, high pitched whine escapes Hawke’s lips. Tutting, Isabela drops a kiss on the underside of Hawke’s jaw before pulling back slightly. “Now now, I’ll be needing a real answer.”

Hawke’s eyes are unfocused and she’s already panting, clearly desperate. The hand Isabela felt at her hip before now claws against the fabric of her corset, a dull echo of a feeling but the intent not lost. Even so, Isabela waits for her to swallow and meet her gaze.

“You’re serious?” she asks.

“As the grave.” Isabela replies, then repeats -- because she was quite serious, “Is this what you want?”

Hawke gives her an incredulous look, then shakes her head and sighs out a breathless but firm, “Yes.”

Isabela rewards her with another kiss, this one much less demure, tongue slipping past Hawke’s lips -- half parted in surprise. Hawke responds with gusto, her other hand that had so far been hanging limply at her side finally joining the party by planting itself firmly on the swell of Isabela’s ass.

“Good girl,” she purrs, delighting in the full body shiver that wracks Hawke from toe to tip.

Somehow they manage to ascend the stairs without incident, despite the flurry of hands and discarded clothing Hawke seems none too concerned with picking up. Her lips seem determined not to leave the vicinity of Isabela’s face, though desperation makes more than half of her kisses land sloppily across jaw, cheeks, and chin. Isabela hardly minds and returns as many as she can, adding tongue and teeth to the mix. The doors to Hawke’s chambers stand ajar, just as Isabela left them, and they easily tumble through even with the hand slipping up Isabela’s tunic proving a wild distraction. They end in a breathless heap on Hawke’s bed, Hawke pinned beneath Isabela’s splayed thighs.

“You’ve no idea,” Isabela says, stroking a hand over the high collar covering Hawke’s throat down to her fabric-covered breasts, “how long I’ve been waiting to get you out of these damned things.”

They don’t come off easy, of course. Hawke has to flip over onto her belly, and she balks at Isabela when she produces her trusty boot knife once again when faced with the seemingly endless row of buttons down her back. The only good thing is that with every button undone, so comes undone a bit of Hawke as well. By the time the final one pops free of its loop, Hawke is left a squirming mess framed between her knees. The robes do slip off with ease after that, rucked up, up, up by Isabela’s wandering hands to reveal with tantalizing slowness Hawke’s perfectly peach shaped rump.

Isabela groans with appreciation, dipping her tongue into one of the dimples just above the edge of Hawke’s smalls. “This is what you’ve been hiding under those matron’s robes all this time?” The broad and blemishless expanse of russet-brown skin erupts into goose flesh, rippling up and outward from the epicenter of her touch. Hawke gasps and writhes, trapped from the shoulders up by the volumes of her skirts.

Curious, Isabela trails the very tip of her pointer finger down the length of Hawke’s spine and watches her muscles jump. “Ticklish, Hawke?”

The wicked delight in her voice forces Hawke to roll rather unceremoniously back to glare daggers at her, shoving the last of her robes over her head with a frustrated huff. Isabela raises her hands in half-hearted surrender.

“Not so much then? All right.” Isabela reaches out and chuffs Hawke, who appears wholly unconvinced, lightly under the chin with a wink. “Relax, sweetness. I only bite when I’m asked nicely.”

Withering sunlight streaming stubbornly through the window makes a play of shadows across Hawke’s body when she finally acquiesces. She sprawls back against the crimson damask pillows, a vision of sinful temptation bathed in warm, honeyed light. 

“Andraste’s arse, just look at you,” Isabela says, crowding her, pushing into her space and making it her own-- their own. “I’m going to burn those damned robes. If I had my way, you’d never wear clothes again.”

Hawke preens under the compliment, luxuriating in the attention in a way it appears she will only allow herself to do behind closed doors, her flaxen eyes slipping closed at the same time Isabela’s lips make contact with the apex of her breasts.

This time when the knife comes out, Hawke has nothing to say. The blade slips cold and close to the skin beneath her breast band and smalls and rends them to scrap with its quick sharpness. She’ll buy her new ones later-- fancy things of her own choosing, send them to her and wait to check if she’s worn them with a wandering hand behind backs. Later. Later? She rarely considers a later when the now is still happening, and the now is so very good: Glorious Hawke, with her pretty, perfect cunt already dripping for her, and her breasts that seem to fit like puzzle pieces within the cup of Isabela’s hand, a realization entirely too long in the making.

Hawke keens at the slightest touch, sounds that seem to travel from the depths of her, full throated and uninhibited. It calls Isabela like a siren song, puts her in thrall-- she sucks one dusky nipple between her lips, then the other, tongue moving in tandem with the fingers she presses between Hawke’s slicked folds. Hawke all but shrieks, hips jerking when Isabela flicks over her clit once, twice, thrice. The sweat that beads her abdomen mixes with the taste of sweet milk soap and embrium on Isabela’s tongue. If she could bottle that, she would lose herself to the bottom of it as surely as the finest whiskey.

Hawke comes like a powerful rogue wave, swift and unexpected. She clenches so hard around the single finger Isabela had slipped inside her, that the thought occurs she might lose it. 

“I’m-- sorry.” Hawke pants between rolling aftershocks that drag her eyes to the ceiling. 

“Sorry for what, sweet thing?” The finger that had been inside Hawke slips between Isabela’s lips, the leftover slick coating her tongue. Hawke watches her and whimpers.

“For it being over with so quickly, it’s-- been some time for me.”

Isabela cackles. “Oh dearest,” she tuts, standing and finally working at removing her own sweat damp clothing. “We are far from over with.” At Hawke’s dazed and glazed look, she stalks back to the bed clad only in the heavy jewels at her throat, and props a leg up close to Hawke’s face, parting her own folds with slender fingers. “Come on now, you’ve got work to do.”

 

They doze, falling in and out of brilliant, orgasm-sweet slumber as twilight bleeds into full dark. She dreams of rich earth, deep and black, the kind trapped under Hawke’s fingernails after a day spent planting and pruning. The soil crumbles between her toes, soft as velvet and damp with ocean water-- the salt-smell tickling her nose, calling her towards its source. The mud holds her fast. Her feet sink and twist like roots, down down down into the belly of the earth-- too deep to ever be uprooted, while the salt breeze cruelly stings her cheeks and carries on its back unintelligible whispers of cowardice and longing.

She wakes with a start, Hawke still curled against her stomach where she’d left her-- but awake as well, busy tracing constellations both familiar and not between the myriad freckles on Isabela’s forearm. She stops when Isabela shifts, raising on an elbow to allow her arm to pull free.

“Were you dreaming?” Hawke asks, voice still rough from screams and sleep. Isabela stills, ice in her belly and salt in her nose. “You seemed restless, is all.”

Shaking herself, Isabela sits up at the edge of the bed. Hawke follows and places a searing kiss to the base of her neck. It feels like a brand.

“Dreams are dreams,” she says, reaching out with a foot to grab her discarded smalls with her toes. “Nothing to fret over.”

She manages to get both smalls and breast band back in place, her tunic in hand, before Hawke, still gloriously naked, catches her hip with a touch.

“You’re leaving.” 

It doesn’t sound like a question, so Isabela doesn’t deign to answer it. She slips the tunic over her head. “I’ve taken advantage of your hospitality long enough.”

The same hand grips tight to the edge of the fabric.

“You could stay.” There is something to Hawke’s voice, like the shaking of leaves on a tree. “The streets are dangerous this time of night, even here in Hightown.”

Isabela fights at the smile tugging her lips and loses. “You’re sweet. I can take care of myself though, I think.”

“But you don’t have to.”

This time Isabela turns to face her, but her eyes look past her face to the patterned pillows beyond. “Hawke--”

“We’ve seen one another naked, you can call me Marian.”

“Hawke. Look, that was… fun. Really and truly. But I think you may be-- mistaken. About what happened here.”

She looks, really looks, at Hawke’s face then, even knowing she will regret it, like pressing the bruise to feel the painful echo. It feels less a bruise, however, and more as though someone had flayed her alive from the inside.

“Not anymore,” Hawke says flatly, then: “Why did you come then?”

“Because you wanted me to.”

Hawke nods, biting her lips into a thin line. There’s nothing to argue there, a half-truth is still a truth after all.

“I suppose you think me foolish, acting the--” Hawke falters. “Acting the love-struck girl and all.”

Isabela stands, unable to bear sitting still any longer. Her body is on pins and needles, her mind screaming  _ flee! flee! _ Beneath her feet, the phantom roots bind. “Love’s not foolish, it’s just, not for everyone. It’s not for me. It’s too… messy.”

From behind her, Hawke laughs, small and mirthless. “It’s not always up to you.”

Ice in her belly again. Isabela steps into her left boot. A red satin kerchief pilfered earlier from Hawke’s closet shakes loose when she tips the right one over and she quickly scoops it up, stuffing it beneath her shirt, hoping Hawke hadn’t noticed.

“Doesn’t matter. It can go bother someone else.” A thought, a memory, burning a hole in her chest, filling her throat until it would choke her. “Did you know I was once married?”

The soft pat of feet hitting the floor, the air around her shifting as Hawke comes into her field of vision, wearing a robe now for modesty’s sake. She doesn’t speak, she doesn’t have to.

“When I was freed, I swore I would never marry again.”

The story spills out of her without her really knowing why. Perhaps because she’d never truly told it before, not with all the grit and blood caked around the edges. Someone deserved to know. Hawke needed to know. Perhaps the story of a girl of nearly nineteen, sold like chattel and placed in a pretty golden cage to be her husband’s work of art, his pretty plaything, would wipe away the cobwebs of hurt lingering behind her eyes and leave something else. Anything else.

“You didn’t love him,” Hawke whispers. “Have you ever been in love?”

Little Naishe never knew love, unless the feel of a borrowed blade in her hand for the first time was love. Perhaps something like it, but not quite. Isabela had killed her before she ever could know, just as surely as Zevran’s knife had killed Luis. She buried Naishe deep within the darkest parts of herself, tamped down under layers of pride and loathing thick as stones. Poor, sweet girl never knew what was coming.

Isabela knows love, though, knows all the jagged little bits that chewed you up and spit you back out. Can still remember the look on His face when he’d taken her hand and promised, promised everything he was willing to give her and nothing she was willing to take. He’d begged her to stay, not as prettily or softly as Hawke had, but it had seared a scar across her heart all the same. Sour wine taste in her mouth--- poor sod never recovered. Messy, messy, messy.

Hawke doesn’t apologize, doesn’t flinch or recoil from the truth like others might. She’s strong, Isabela knows that. The flower trod by hooves may yet grow back more resilient, or so Isabela will tell herself later, in the quiet darkness of her own room, as though it will make the aching stop.

“I understand. You don’t want to be tied down.” Hawke’s arms wrap across her abdomen, holding herself where Isabela would not-- could not. “I would never do that to you.”

Oh.

“Oh.” Isabela frowns. “Well, good. I-- appreciate it.” No fight, no lecture. She turns to leave, through the window this time, preferring the trellis and a few thorns over the stares she will no doubt receive from Hawke’s mother. “I’m going to go. I’ve got to… go.”

A step. A Pause. Another step. The window swings open on silent hinges. 

“Should you ever--” Hawke chews her lip. “If you would like to do this-- well, not  _ this _ \-- but  _ that _ ever again. No strings, I promise.”

Less of a smile, more of a baring of teeth. Isabela inclines her head like the tipping of a hat. Salt on the wind whispers  _ coward _ \-- from the running? Or the fact that she already knows, down to her bones, what she will say, how this will play out? Captain’s Intuition. The stolen silk next to her breast could be made of lead. It feels so heavy. 

“You know where to find me.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi to me on [tumblr](http://queenofeden.tumblr.com)!
> 
> and if you're wondering, yes, this is the same hawke featured in all my other works, although this definitely takes place chronologically before all of them.


End file.
